nationalism

Concluding part of our two-part episode on a people’s history of Zionism and opposition to it within Israel, in conversation with former members of socialist group Matzpen: Moshe Machover, Haim and Udi.

On 5 January demonstrators wearing yellow vests assembled in London to demand a ‘hard’ Brexit that will fulfil their nationalist fantasies. In reality that will not happen because it runs so sharply against the interests of the ruling class both in Britain and elsewhere in the European Union.

For the past few years, but particularly in the aftermath of the 2016 US Presidential election, the theme of identity politics has dominated political discourse on both the left and the right. Countless books, articles, blogs and comments have been written on the subject, but we ourselves have dealt with it only in passing.

We live, and have been living, in an epoch of capitalist decadence. Notwithstanding longer life expectancy, technological advance, and the claims of its defenders, the capitalist system is incapable of addressing existential questions such as the destruction of the environment via man-made climate change. After all, to do so would get in the way of making profits. Short-term expediency portends long term disaster.

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